Bilingual books promo at Sei Oriana store...

Bilingual books promo at Sei Oriana SSAB store

Yesterday, I drove past my local SSAB (Samoan Stationery and Books) store and saw that some of my books were on display on the Samoan Bilingual books stand and thought to take a pic of them for my records.

Was also approached by the American Samoan SSAB store manager to trial our books in their market and those have been sent away and hoping for the best as well, as their stories may be a little different too.

The neat thing is that now there is more of an acceptance and an understanding of the benefits of people being bilingual and even multi-lingual in being able to communicate in more than one language i.e. being monolingual definitely has it's draw backs.

And as I continue to my journey into learning also more about te reo Maori I can reflect on my Samoan language and English language understandings and there is definitely a different mind shift in all three languages medium not to mention sign language which I was able to trial here at Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

It was also neat to see a poster on Facebook, the other day, which said something along the lines of "those with broken English can speak another language" and I reflect on how, not so long ago, people would be teased for having broken English when racist and supremacist attitudes prevailed in societies but now there is an understanding that English is but one of many colonial languages that can sit alongside indigenous languages in having worldviews that differ but also reflect similarities as well.

So am very humbled to be in a privileged position to be able to share in thoughts and ideas outside of mainstream English/Western views and to add to the knowledge of indigenous cultures that if not shared for this generation may be lost for all time...